Pictures can be worth a thousand words, and graphics depicting the spread of a threat across the landscape can often convey its scope more effectively than Storyboarding the Apocalypse. Whether it's a Zombie Apocalypse, The Plague, an advancing natural or man-made catastrophe, a World Wreaking Wave or something more conventional like a military invasion, there's no quicker way to show one's audience that an entire region is being overwhelmed than to display a map with rapidly-growing colored blotches or arrows (nearly always red) spreading across it.

Man: I'm running a program now, which assumes that we've knocked out the eastern bloc but that a percentage of their warheads were already en route... Any moment know we'll be able to give you an overview. Ahh... there we are. Britain down, Germany down...

Henry Kissinger: Is that some heading for our east coast there? At this point in our contingency plans, where should we be?

Richard Nixon: Somewhere else, Henry.

In Swamp Thing, the Monitor and Harbinger, on their satellite screens, see Arcane's psychic shockwave, which awakens latent homicidal impulses in people and animals, radiating out of Louisiana. In the second of these scenes, as the map graphic shows the shockwave overtaking all of North America and spreading southward, the Monitor fights his unprecedented urge to look away.

An early vector map of North America (like WarGames below) calculates the projected spread of the fatal contagion in The Andromeda Strain. A death bloom appears around the Wildfire facility, with speckles nearby and tickling population clusters. As the projection continues, most of the United States is engulfed, as is southern Canada and northern Mexico. The computer then displays "601", an error code signifying too many dead bodies to count.

The second opens with a similar visual, showing the spread of the virus in red, as the Earth rotates and a montage of sound bites play out the chaos caused by the virus and the subsequent collapse of civilization as a whole. By the time the rotation is complete and the American west coast comes back around, all the red representing the viral spread has receded because it ran its course and (almost) everybody is dead.

If you pay close enough attention to the globe, the vectors completely miss North Korea.

In Reign of Fire, the opening montage of how the dragons devastated Europe includes glimpses of maps with fiery lines spreading across them.

In a low-tech variant, the climatologist-hero in The Day After Tomorrow uses a map of the continental U.S. to convey the scope of the danger, drawing a horizontal line across it and proclaiming that everywhere below it must be evacuated south: there's no realistic hope of saving people north of that line.

He also sends another climatologist a series of on-screen graphics of the three storms, building and building over Canada, Siberia and northern Europe until they cover half the globe.

Enemy at the Gates opens with a graphic showing the Nazi conquest of Europe, ending as the wave of advance gets to Stalingrad. Curiously, they show Nazi Germany starting out with its mid-war borders and invading their Allies (Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgarianote Those first two did happen historically later on, but that's not what they're showing) and several neutral countries (Switzerland, Spain, Turkey) as well.

The Rocketeer. A Nazi propaganda film shows German troops equipped with Jet Packs flying to the attack, with maps showing arrows representing them reaching out to conquer Europe and invade the U.S. Watch it here.

Near the end of 2012, on-screen graphics in the ark control room depict the massive waves closing in Asia and other continents.

Lots of examples pop up on the screens at NORAD in WarGames, depicting the hundreds of strategies WOPR devises as it plans how to win a nuclear war. Swelling circles scattered across a global map indicate nuclear strikes to cities, military bases and missile silos. All of them show every side getting eliminated completely, which turns out to be a very good thing.

The movie Outbreak has one scene that shows how quickly the United States would be utterly boned if the Motaba virus breaks quarantine and/or the CDC can't find a cure for it.

The abundantly silly Y2K straight-to-TV movie about the Millenium Bug showed a "cascade" effect of power being lost across the world, either because the bug was spreading or because each time zone was crossing midnight.

Broken Arrow (1996) has one showing the casualties that would result from a nuclear explosion in a major city.

The animated map in the opening montage from Edge of Tomorrow shows how the alien invasion spread across Europe.

In Ciaphas Cain, three characters are watching the advance of the Tyranid hive fleet towards the planet they're on via auspex screen. In this case, the Advancing Wall of Doom isn't the actual hive fleet, it's the "Shadow in the Warp" it casts, which disrupts FTL travel and communication in a huge radius around it.

Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters. A map is used to show the extent of parasite infestation in the U.S., with areas controlled by the parasites glowing red, those under human control in green, and contested areas in amber. Several times the red areas of the map are described as expanding, showing a spread of the parasites.

War Against The Chtorr. Jim McCarthy is shown an official government map of the alien infestation by his Colonel Badass girlfriend. She then uses her top secret classification to show him the real extent of the problem. There's hardly a place in Southern California that hasn't been infested.

Shattered Continent: An out-of-date one is found in the sub-levels of an abandoned military base, which was being used to track the spread of nuclear fallout from the bombing of Konigsberg.

In the New Jedi Order series of novels for the Star Wars Expanded Universe, each book has a map of the galaxy at the start. As the series goes on, each map shows how far the Yuuzhan Vong have gotten in their invasion of the galaxy, starting at the galaxy's edge and gradually making their way towards the Core, taking a large swath of territory in the process.

In the third season of seaQuest DSV, Captain Hudson shows a map of the aggressive Macronesian influence. He asks Lucas when his birthday is then asks the computer to predict its extent by that date. The map changes to show a much larger area.

"Better celebrate that birthday now."

In the Masters of Horror episode "The Screwfly Solution", a mystery plague is causing men to become murderously violent towards women and inadvertently destroying humanity's ability to reproduce. The scientists analyzing the phenomenon graph the spread on a digital map and discover that it is progressing north and south along the world's latitudes from the equator.

In the Supernatural episode "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part One" (S02, Ep21), this trope is inverted when Bobby shows Dean an interstate map of the United States with no notes or marks and says this represents all demonic signs and omens in the last month. Dean and Bobby realize that the absence of any demonic activity, including low level activity like exorcisms, can not be a good sign and leaves them with no way to track Sam.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's James Bond spoof episode, "Our Man Bashir" has the villain (played by Sisko)'s plan to cause massive floods all over the world from the relative safety of the Himalayas. Bashir, having to save his comrades from the simulation, deliberately triggers the plan, and the whole world map turns blue minus a few isolated dots.

Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40,000loves using these. Probably the most dramatic (which has been reprinted a few times) is the diagram of the Tyranid Hive Fleets' approaches on the galaxy, but there have also been maps depicting Ork Waaaaaghs, Chaos Incursions, Warp Anomaly spreads, or just good old fashioned campaign progress.

The Day of Lavos Ending in Chrono Trigger shows on a computer screen locations that were destroyed by Lavos emerging from the world. The last image of the screen is of the world covered with red dots.

As you progress through the main quests of Dragon Age: Origins, the Point-and-Click Map you use to travel between individual locations is progressively shaded black, starting from the south, indicating the Darkspawn infestation. You can still travel into Darkspawn-controlled areas but doing so has a higher chance of Random Encounters.

Infectionator has a realtime display of the countries that you have managed to infect.

StarCraft: Brood War has an In-Universe example, with an Earth Propaganda video showing the alien Zerg forces taking planet after planet, indicated by red arrows in space.

In the game Plague Inc, the parts of the map that are infected by a deadly plague become more and more covered in tiny red dots until the entire country is red. This is the infection phase. When these countries face fatalities, the more people that die, the more the countries turn a bloody dark red. Furthermore, ships and planes that carry the infection leave a red trail rather than a white trail.

In Dynasty Warriors, this is a standard depiction of the kingdoms' conquests and territorial expansion during the pre-battle narrations; with the occasional Tetris T-block to represent a particular officer or ruler moving from one province to another. Also Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Green for Shu, Indigo for Wei, Red for Wu, Cyan for Jin.

This is the nature of Tiberium in the Command & Conquer: Tiberium series, and is illustrated during a briefing in the first game which shows a map of the earth with spreading green patches representing Tiberium growth.

In the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert, some game over cinematics following defeat during an Allied mission will show the red of the Soviet Union submerging the entire European continent as parading soldiers can be heard in the background.

The opening cinematic of the game also ends with the camera slowly zooming out of a map of Europe when suddenly a sword with the Hammer and Sickle on the hilt flies out of nowhere, strikes in the center of Germany, and red splotches begins to grow at various points on the European landmass. All this while "Hell March" plays the sounds of marching soldiers.

In Ace Combat Zero, the story tells how Belka's poor economy allowed the eastern portion of the country to secede and become independent nations, including Ustio. Belka's economic problems didn't end, and their borders continued to shrink, allowing those new nations to further expand, and allowing Osea to claim some of the country's western borders. Belka went to war started expanding outwards to reclaim their lost borders and acquire more resources. They even invaded the southern country of Sapin, who wasn't even involved.

Later, the map shows about 50% of Belka surrender and let allied forces move in. This left the original Principality of Belka with only about 35% of the territory the country had before their economic problems and the war.

In the ending cutscene, depending on what ending you choose, there is an animation of control, destruction, or synthesis spreading from mass relay to mass relay.

The Normandy's Galaxy Map shows systems that the Reapers have invaded. At the beginning, there are only a few, but as the game progresses, more and more Reaper icons appear as they spread through the galaxy.

In the original Civilization and in IV, at the end of a game you can watch an animation of the rival empires spreading across the world map. Though if the player won, they probably don't count that as a disaster.

In UFO Aftermath, the world map thoughtfully shows the alien terraforming ick spreading from centres of infection to, if you can't stop it, wipe humanity off the face of the earth and complete the aliens' plan.

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